


snuggling

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Baking, Bubble Bath, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dogs, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Movie Night, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Sweaters, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 03:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: There are certain things Steve misses from his good old days. One of them is Bucky, of course; another is how easily tactile people used to be with each other. Then he gets Bucky back, and the Avengers help him with his touch-starvation in their own way, too.





	snuggling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Happy Steve Bingo for the prompt "snuggling".

 “It's your bed, isn't it?” Sam asked, and he was right. It was his bed. Too soft and too warm, nothing like Brooklyn, nothing like the war.

Steve's biggest problem, however, was the size.

His bed was just too fucking huge. What does one man need a bed that size for? It just reminds you how lonely you are in it, alone.

Not that Steve needed that extra reminder.

 

One of the worst things about the 21st century is how distant people are from one another.

Steve doesn't mean this in a condescending kind of way, the way some people like to preach from their high horses. It's not about technology alienating today's generation; in fact, Steve loves the tech. The cars are quiet and fast, and don't rattle your bones. The internet is a miracle, and you can become an expert on any subject overnight – when Tony said this the first time they met he didn't believe him, but man, was the genius right – or you can drown your sorrows in cute pet videos. Both is a win in Steve's book. And cell phones... Steve cannot imagine how many of his problems would have been solved if he could've just called home, or Bucky, or–

Steve could've gotten his degree from his own couch. He could've _worked_ and made money from his own couch. And that's even without taking the huge improvements in medical science into consideration. What wouldn't Steve love about that?

But the people are... less familiar with each other. In a physical sort of way.

They don't touch. Well, men shake hands, quickly, then let go immediately. Women fake-kiss each other on the cheek, then stand a foot apart.

Steve has no idea how non-binary people greet each other. Maybe they are more accepting of skin-to-skin contact.

If there's a slap on his shoulder, it's usually accompanied by some banter. If someone touches his forearm, it's usually to take a blood test. If someone throws an arm around him, they are usually out to kill him.

It's not even the lack of sex Steve thinks of when he looks at that unreasonably large bed of his. It's the lack of _people_. It's the lack of his Ma's gentle caresses. It's the lack of Peggy, sprawling over him after a tiring mission. It's the lack of Bucky... it's the lack of Bucky.

 

 

Natasha is the first to see the cracks. Or at least, the first to act.

Maybe more see it too; they just don't want to go near Captain America, golden boy, patriotic hero. Heroes are the stuff from legends: they cannot have human problems. Admitting Cap has issues would be too frightening – it would rock the very foundation of his image, and thus people's core beliefs. If Cap can crave touch, closeness, _love;_ if he's just one human, like the rest, then who do they trust? Who do they aspire to live up to? And what else isn't real about the world around them? Maybe America isn't the country of freedom and justice after all?

That concept is too frightening.

Not to Nat, though, Steve is happy to notice the first Christmas when Bucky is with them, back at the Tower – well, physically, even if not much else. He doesn't come out to open the presents, but that's okay. He lets Steve draw in the same place he prefers to stare at a wall from, and Steve will take that.

Maybe the cracks are showing _because_ _of_ Bucky's not-all-there return, who knows. Who cares. The end result is that Steve gets a hoodie from Nat, it’s more than a hoodie. It's _magic_.

Knitted, but from a material that is softer than the softest of wools Steve has ever touched, and has an inner layer of fleece for extra warmth and fluffiness. It's creamy white, with a line of trees across the chest in a cold, but not harsh grey, and a front tunnel pocket at the belly. It's also gigantic, goes around two inches over Steve's fingers, and the bottom reaches his mid thighs.

Oh, and it has a hoodie that, when closed, turns Steve into a caterpillar, face fully covered.

At first he's skeptical of it, thinks it's Tony's gag gift, but it's too nice to... it's just too nice. And when he tries it on he quickly discovers that he never wants to take it off again. Being cocooned in the hoodie is the best he's ever felt in a long time, best other than actually finding Bucky in an alley, scrawny and bleeding but _alive_.

The team teases him, but nothing can diminish the value of snuggling into an armchair with his legs pulled up, the hoodie around him like a warm embrace, and a fresh cup of coffee in his hands. He suddenly doesn't find the cold so repulsing, anymore, because it gives him a reason to burrow.

 

 

He wears it everywhere for a while, to movie nights, to team dinners, to quiet drawing moments; so much so, that some even catch on.

Thor comes back from Asgard one day with a few small bottles of what is clearly various types of oil. He explains it to Steve – loudly, just like he does everything else – that the oils are good with water and fire, and can be put into baths or candles, and Asgardians apparently use them to relax more easily. Steve's a bit embarrassed, because even those that hadn't realized his hoodie-obsession surely know now that... something's up, but he's also kind of eager to try them out.

Bucky has moments when prefers to be _completely_ alone, not just mentally, and he mostly goes up to the rooftop to stare at the sky. He never seems to actually see anything, and Steve has JARVIS keep an eye on him, so Steve decides to use one such occasion to pour a few drops of a bright purple oil into a huge candle – his reasoning being that he can air the apartment before Bucky comes back so as not to unsettle him.

The candle has an opposite-than-unsettling effect, though.

Steve absolutely cannot describe it, but it's like someone got hold of all his tangled thoughts and began smoothing them over, never yanking, just careful, gentle movements, and he sinks into the scent that fills the room and burrows deeper into his hoodie, and closes his eyes and doesn't worry.

He is rustled from this dream-like stance by the return of Bucky, whose eyes are round with shock but for once, Steve doesn't jump up to fuss about him, instead, he just smiles up at him. And Bucky actually looks him in the eye for a second, and he doesn't disappear into his room, instead he just sits down, away from Steve, and breathes with him.

 

Sam's mom's cookies are an astounding success. The chocolate erupts on his tongue, and his heart swells with each passing bite – there's something about his childhood in there, not in the taste itself, but in the act of making it. His ma in the kitchen, the love with which she talked to Steve; it rushes back at him in one overwhelming wave, and he swears to learn to make it.

He doesn't manage to get the recipe out of Sam – apparently, he is more afraid of his mother's wrath than Steve's – but the recipe he gets from Google is adequate enough. Or it would be, if Steve knew how to cook.

He has enough grey matter left in his brain to try mixing the ingredients with the hoodie safe in his room, so at least that doesn't get destroyed, unlike the Henley he wears the first time, or the bowl he breaks the second time. When he fails for the third time, he needs to take a hot bath, partly to clean himself, but mostly to calm himself with a new bottle of oil from Thor’s collection.

He emerges much less ready to crush a spoon just because he can never get the texture of the batter right, especially after donning the beloved hoodie, but he is sad when he has nothing to show for his efforts to Bucky, who ghosts him from the shadows of the kitchen.

 

The baths become a regular after that. Steve discovers that they do help with muscle cramps and joint aches after missions, or when his skin is already burning from punching a bag way harder than necessary without actually releasing any tension.

He tries a bath bomb Pepper gifts him once, too, but nothing compares to the oil, even though the texture is a nice touch. He needs the scent to embrace him, so he can sink into the hot water feeling safe and sound; an illusion he allows himself.

One night he takes off the hoodie even before getting into the bathroom, a choice he regrets at first after he gets out and dries himself, because his favorite item of clothing is _missing_. He thinks someone pulled a prank at him, because who else would steal his snuggly knitwear if not a cruel, evil person?

Then he checks in on Bucky, because whoever is up for a misdeed like this may have also harmed Buck, but–

Bucky is in the middle of his room, watching himself in the large mirror – watching himself in Steve's hoodie. And his face is nothing but pure bliss, and Steve knows he will never wear that hoodie again. It's Bucky's now, and whoever wants to take it will have to go through Steve first.

 

This change, everybody notices.

Tony's solution is a blanket: thick and somewhat stiff, thanks to the weird wires? between two layers of fleece. And then Tony demonstrates where the switch is located and what it does, and the blanket can _heat up_.

Steve lives under that blanket now. His permanent residence is on the sofa, snuggling under the delicious heat, thank you, and nothing short of an actual alien army trying to destroy the world _again_ can make him move. Not even Sam's mom's cookies. Not even Bucky.

Well, maybe Bucky. Because Bucky is, apparently, willing to trade the hoodie for the blanket. And Steve has never been good at saying no to him, anyway.

 

Clint brings Lucky around.

So Clint has a dog, apparently, and he is the cuddly type.

Steve has to spend hours on the internet, trying to find tips and tricks about removing dog hair from knitted materials, and ends up with twelve different kinds of lint rollers, because Lucky is a cuddler, and not even Steve's hoodie will change that. In fact, it seems to encourage the dog to clamber into Steve's lap whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Lucky is also incidentally the only one who can successfully tempt Bucky from the blanket, in as much as he burrows with Bucky but then gets too excited to stay still and ends up disrupting the fort Bucky had going on.

Neither of them mind, and Steve actually considers buying a dog for himself when he experiences it first hand, how amazing it is to fall asleep while hugging one.

 

The actual touching part is initiated by none other than Bruce.

Steve is mildly surprised by this, in as much as he can be surprised by anything these days. Bruce doesn't usually handle physical contact well, but it turns out that he misses it in small, controlled doses. So one night they are having an argument, loudly and aggressively, as usual, in the communal kitchen. Tony and Thor are the loudest; Bucky has shrunk back on himself again, despite having done so well lately, which just makes Steve more explosive than normal. Natasha is vaguely threatening in the background, not helping the de-escalation at all, and then Bruce announces that he feels somewhat green around the edges.

They immediately shut up, but the tension doesn't dissipate from the room.

'Could someone just hug me?' Bruce asks, and Clint immediately drops down from the top of the fridge to embrace him in a bear hug.

"Could someone just hug me" inadvertently becomes a catchphrase. Tony uses it sarcastically during the next team meeting, but joke's on him because Thor immediately takes Tony into a crushing hug. Natasha mutters it after a particularly nasty mission when Bruce asks her how she is, and she finds herself in the middle of the whole team. Steve says it the first time when his knuckles are bloody from yet another session with the bag, when Bucky hasn't been out of his room for two days straight. That time it's only Sam around, but then it becomes easier and easier to say.

 

Movie nights are no longer spent in individual chairs or on cushions: the team is in one huge pile, everybody being in contact with at least two others, and Steve is more relaxed than what the oil, the cookies and the hoodie could achieve combined. He even manages to fall asleep, snug between a torso and some thighs, which is a first but certainly not a last.

Sometimes he climbs behind Tony when the mechanic is passed out on the workshop's couch. Sometimes Nat climbs behind Steve when he's snoring on the gym floor. Sometimes it's Clint that gets surrounded on his favorite spot, a fake sheepskin carpet of his apartment, by Sam. Sometimes Thor and Bruce find themselves sprawled together on a sofa.

They learn that they all sleep better if they have another rhythm of breaths leading their own.

 

The biggest victory, for Steve, is when Bucky first plasters himself to his side and requests that they rest together. He even brings the heat blanket, which proves to be way too hot for their enhanced bodies. The second biggest is when Bucky doesn't withdraw, but keeps curling up to Steve's side, and they spend whole afternoons snuggling on the couch. It's even better than their first kiss of the century, or the first taste of Bucky's chocolate chip cookies, which he secretly made while Steve fought some invading frogmen, or that time they forgot about the world in a hot tub scented with Asgardian oil.

And maybe this century has people who are less keen on physical touches than Steve is. But now Steve knows that people are still people, and if you let them, if you trust them and wait for them, they _can_ help you with your touch-starvation. And maybe you can help with theirs, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Told you it was happier than the previous one! Btw I wrote this a month ago half-asleep, and I don't have a beta, so sorry for any incoherence.
> 
> Steve's sweater-cuddling is very self-indulgent. My main reason for loving the fall and winter season is because I can burrow in my favorite jumpers :)
> 
> I mention the love (both Bucky's and Steve's) for warm sweaters in [my fifth fill for the Happy Steve Bingo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803994) too!
> 
> Join the [Happy Steve Bingo here](https://happystevebingo.tumblr.com/)!


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